I will echo what Knowledge Economy International, which campaigns for fairer access to knowledge, says: “We are disappointed,” (the director, James Love).

I don’t see why we need two document formats (PDF excluded) as an ISO-standard, especially when OOXML has 6,000 pages of code whereas ODF has a mere 860 pages. This, apparently, makes the two formats incompatible, “…many experts argue that translation between the two is too incomplete to allow true interoperability – a concept that Microsoft has recently publicly embraced,” Reuters says.

Who can we blame for the adopting of OOXML? Well, the United States, Britain, Germany and Japan, according to the OpenDoc Society, to name a few. I’m just glad that I can say that opponents not only included China and India but also New Zealand.

New Zealand politician, Nandor Tanczos, has openly criticised the Parliamentry computer system over their overuse of “crashing” Microsoft applications and operating systems.

Tanczos said on the Frogblog that he encountered huge hurdles just to be allowed to install Firefox on his computer, and then he was assured that he would get no support if thing turned bad (like that would happen with Firefox…).

Governments should be doing more to encourage the use of open source. Isn’t that what democracy is all about? “That’s without even mentioning the cost benefits.”

And to top it off, they are still running Windows 2000. My school got rid of that piece of slow shit a wee while ago; thank goodness.

Xbox gamers who managed to get a leaked copy of the third Halo game have had their Xbox Live accounts banned for 7,992 years for violating the Terms of Use.

On 12 December, 9999 these gamers will be able to play online once again. One person said to me, “At least they have something to look forward to.” On the official Xbox forums, Sam Herrett said, “Well I hope you have good patience :P” (Xbox forum hat tip: Brian Anderton).

I suspect that the ban will stay in place, but not for 8,000 years. The ban might just have been put in place to scare while the game is still awaiting release and to gather media attention. But then, the message displayed to banned gamers includes this: “There is no recourse for Terms of Use violations.”

The ban will be easy to overcome, for a price. All they need to do is buy a new Xbox, etc.

Microsoft has said, when it first released the music player, Zune, that a mobile phone based on it could be in the future.

Earlier this year, Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said at a CEO forum that the Zune phone is not a concept that Microsoft would ever pursue. But he then said it could easily add music or gaming functionality to its Windows Mobile platform.

“It wouldn’t be unreasonable to think at some point there might some integrated thing,” Mindy Mount, chief financial officer of Microsoft’s entertainment and devices division, told investors at Citigroup’s global technology conference.

“It wouldn’t be unreasonable to think at some point there might some integrated thing,” Mindy Mount, chief financial officer of Microsoft’s entertainment and devices division, told investors at Citigroup’s global technology conference.

However, Microsoft have not yet released the pricing details officially. The pricing details are expected closer to the launch date of August 24.

The Xbox 360 Elite will boast a 120 gigabyte hard drive, a HDMI video-out port, black casing, and black peripherals. All other specs of the Xbox 360 are the same of the normal Xbox 360. The 120 gigabyte hard drive is “the largest available for any gaming console”.